Everything But the Moan

We once visited a stockyard in Sioux City Iowa and spoke to some of the cattlemen there.  They said that when it came to making money from a cow, they use “Everything but the moo.”  That this is pretty much the attitude of upstate politicians towards the prisoners held in their districts, becomes apparent in an interview with State Senator Velmanette Montgomery.
Not only do the prisons provide jobs for the area and increase the local voting power, Senator Montgomery pointed out that for decades “The Republicans were able to rule the senate based on the prisoners,” counted as part of their districts.  Another plus for the upstate districts from having prisoners on the count is that they take not only the body, but find profit in the prisoner’s station in life as well. “After all, that is what the Census is for,” she continued.  “It determines how many people live in each city who are of different income, age, ethnic, and occupation categories. All of these factors help generate public dollars based on the needs of people in the various categories. 
   So in the upstate counties, prisoners are counted as low income and have all of the needs associated with that.  Funding goes to those districts,” rather than the home districts where most come from, districts in Brooklyn, Manhattan and the Bronx.
The Senator points out that what this means for districts such as hers is that “With the Rockefeller Drug Law repeal, many more people will be returning home in the next few years.  Based on that we have a constant influx of  people who need support services.   And if they’ve not been counted as part of our district, We’ve lost funding based on that.”
So for years after the prisoners are counted,  they will be released back to the areas they came from, areas that have been deprived of the dollars to service them.  “We’ll need to provide housing, all health services, substance abuse treatments, counseling,  as well as, hopefully, job training and job placement.”
“The Census counts population, period.  Based on population, a senate district is drawn, council districts are drawn, congressional districts are drawn, and city council districts are drawn.”  Speaking of how this relates to the State Senate, Montgomery said “If it were not for the prisoners, there would not be enough people in some upstate areas to form a Senate District..”
Senator Eric Schneiderman’s has introduced an act “to amend the correction law, the legislative law, and the municipal home rule law, in relation to the collection of census data,” that seeks to correct this situation.
 ” There is definitely  pushback on this legislation” from upstate legislators says Montgomery.  “It does not benefit them.  In those rural areas, they had more power than urban centers where the prisoners come from.” 
As a former slave, valued at 3/5th of a man, Frederick Douglass would be familiar with the situation highlighted by the report of the prison initiative (www. prisonpolicy.org ) where we see that in state Senator Dale Volker’s 59th District, when you deduct the 8,951 prisoners (4,447 of which are black), the district has 285,306 residents.  Senator Montgomery’s 18th District has 311,260 residents- not even adding in the count from the prisons.   Meaning that the people in her district are worth almost 10% less than those in the rural areas upstate.

View From Here: Governor Paterson on the Edge

 Governor David Paterson’s problems are entirely of his own making.   Interfering with a woman protecting herself from a physical abuser?   It was both an arrogance of power and a devaluing of women.  It was also thoughtless, because his actions were just the open opportunity for any number of forces in the state to pounce on and that’s before you factor in the ever-present racism, which is always intertwined in there somewhere. 
The upcoming redistricting, the allocation of the state budget,  the private money that is made or lost based on relationships with who occupies the governor’s mansion, all involved are working their contacts and rumor makers to fill the atmosphere with their chatter in order to force the governor to resign before the investigation by the office of Attorney General Andrew Cuomo can run its course. 
How long he and his family can withstand the strain of the constant questions is uncertain, but Paterson appears for now to feel he will be exonerated and is trying to hold on until the investgation completes but he may not have that long.  As we go to press we see that the New York Times is reporting that  “Gov. David A. Paterson falsely testified under oath during an ethics investigation into his acceptance of free World Series tickets last fall, according to the State Commission on Public Integrity, which announced on Wednesday that it had asked prosecutors to determine if criminal charges should be brought against the governor.”  Things don’t look good at all for the governor. 
They are looking good for probable candidate for governor Andrew Cuomo who must also see the downside of being under two microscopes: one looking at how his office handles the investigation of Governor Paterson and the other on where he stands on state issues such as state Senator Schneiderman’s legislation on where prisoners reside for redistricting purposes.  And if he’s going to be the candidate for governor, he has to tell us his thoughts now, and not in May after he saw which way the wind blew.
The Democratic leadership may hate it but they’d better have a primary because there’s nothing like a good fight to see what arguments are out there and if your candidate can take the hit.  And after Spitzer, Hevesi and Paterson, they may need to find a  plan B, just in case plan A for Andy blows up in their face as all the others have. 
Paterson’s holding on but Congressman Charlie Rangel has had to let go of the chairmanship of the House Ways and Means Committee in the wake of a report from the House Ethics committee that admonished him for ethics violation in accepting corporate-sponsored trips. 

Will this health care horror never end?  The problem is that the simplicity of single-payer has not broken through the wall of health industry noise and their political contributions.  It helps to remember that every time you see a health plan truck on the street with their insurance vendors stopping passers by, those are health care premiums at work.  We’ve said it before and will again that it is the health premiums that pay for the  district managers, the area managers the regional managers the vice-presidents, the presidents, and the stockholders.   And this is for each insurance company.  And at these insurance companies they use premiums to pay people to find reasons to override doctors, deny care and pay the doctors, technicians, nurses and hospitals from what’s left. 
In a single-payer system, with no insurance company involvement, a patient goes to the health provider, receives treatment and uses a health card to confirm the visit and services.  The provider informs the Medicare-like system, and is paid. By cutting out the health industry jobs program for managers and executives, there is finally money to pay decent fees for services because the entire population is in the insurance pool.
With a full-blown single-payer program, the insurance companies, except for high-end boutique providers, will go the way of the tuberculosis wards and the polio-equipment supply houses.  This is an end they will rail against to the very end, but when it comes, the nation will be healthier and wealthier for it.

Where to Count Prisoners Leads Concerns at Congressional Hearing on Census

Issue Impact Redistricting and Federal Funds

Where prisoners are counted as living determines both electoral districts as well as how many federal dollars are available for everything from job creation to food stamps and other human needs.  With 75% of prisoners in upstate New York coming from seven zip codes in New York City, it was an area of special concern at the congressional hearing of The Information Policy, Census and National Archives Subcommittee held at Brooklyn’s Borough Hall this past Monday.

The hearing on Group Quarters such as prisons, schools and nursing homes, chaired by Congressman William Lacy Clay, Jr. and held jointly with the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, chaired by Congressman Ed Towns, took testimony from  Census Director Dr. Robert Groves that since 1790, the United States Census Bureau has counted people using the usual Residency Rule, i.e., where they eat, sleep and live most of the time.
Peter Wagner, Executive Director of the Prison Policy Initiative, had a startling statistic: the 2.3 million people incarcerated is larger than the population of 15 states.  “Some districts are 80-90% prisoners” he told the committee.  The Web site for the Initiative says that “In New York State, for example, one out of every three people who moved to upstate New York in the 1990s actually ‘moved’ into a newly constructed prison. The state bars people in prison from voting, but their presence in the Census boosts the population of the upstate districts whose legislators favor prison expansion. Without this phantom population, seven upstate New York Senate districts would not meet minimum population requirements and would have to be redrawn.”
Currently, with prisoners included as residents of the county where they are incarcerated, rather than where they came from, the federal dollars for social services based on population are sent to counties where the prisons are located, even though the prisoners don’t use any local services and the counties where the prisoners come from, usually high-need areas, lose the dollars earmarked to provide them with services.
They can’t do  an individual count/interview because of the security. The bureau depends on administrative records to count the prisoners.  In later testimony, Mr. Thomas Ellet, Associate Vice President of Student Affairs at New York University, said that in terms of the accuracy of administrative records, the quality varies across systems, “particularly in prisons.”
Wagner later reminded the congressmen that legally speaking the prisoners have not left their homes.  Here he was referring to the NY Constitution which says that “no person shall be deemed to have gained or lost a residence by reason of his presence or absence … while confined in any public prison.”   And he said that the legislature can do something this year to include the prisoners in the count of their home addresses.  
The bureau is taking the position that the Census is not proposing to change where people are counted, and are leaving it up to the states to determine how that count will be used in the reapportionment process, where political districts are drawn to contain the same number of people in order to adhere to a federally-mandated “one man, one vote” standard.   Dr. Groves agreed with Chairman Clay that he was glad not to be a part of the redistricting process.  According to Senator Velmanette Montgomery’s office, a Bill in the NYS Senate is due to be proposed momentarily.
Chairman Towns asked Robert Goldenkoff, Director of Strategic Issues for the Government Accountability Office, about the technological readiness of the Census Bureau for the April 1st start date.  Goldenkoff divided the problems into categories.  First: People, the technicians are falling behind schedule and can’t take away the time from doing the work to train new people. Second was Hardware: the Census computers are simply outdated.  Third was Software, where defects are continuing to mount and of course four, the Schedule.  The operation has a fixed date (April 1st.) when the system must be ready.  He acknowledged that the Bureau has gained some time by scaling back from the full-blown version as originally envisioned, but said that even at the reduced level, the bureau remains challenged to hit the April 1st mark.
Looking to improve the job the Census does in traditionally undercounted areas such as Bedford-Stuyvesant, Chairman Towns asked Dr. Groves if the discretionary funds the Bureau has could be used to target areas such as Kings County that have been traditionally undercounted in the past.  “We need to get the information out to the people, using local news and local press.” Dr. Groves responded that they were advertising to the grassroots level, using community newspapers. [ Publisher's Note: we haven't gotten any.] As for the discretionary funds, Dr. Groves said that response rates to the mailing were being analyzed and areas that appeared to be undercounted will be the target for the discretionary funds.

Africans in the Americas-Parts 1 & 2

The first explorers from Africa arrive on the north and south equatorial currents spanning the Atlantic Ocean between the African and American continents.  Historian Ivan Van Sertima points to these forces as a natural conveyor belt between West Africa and the Americas.  

The most striking physical evidence of Africans is the distinctively Negroid stone heads of the Olmec civilization.   Dr. Van Sertima reports that the archaeological context in which they were found has been radio carbon dated to 800 B.C. To judge the impact of that African presence, Van Sertima tells us this:  “At the sacred center of the Olmec culture-La Venta about eighteen miles inland from the Gulf of Mexico which flows into the Atlantic, there stood four colossal Negroid heads, six to nine feet high, weighing up to forty tons each.  They stood in large squares or plazas in front of the most colorful temple platforms, the sides and floors of which were of red, yellow and purple.  They stood twelve to twenty times larger than the faces of living men.  They were like gods among the Olmecs. 

There is a Mandingo head of fourteenth century Mexico, which may be all that is left of the vision of Abubakari, the Second Emperor of Mali.  His was a land where “thousands of Arab and Egyptian caravans passed every year through Timbuktu and Niani. He stood on the western shore of his empire and sent forth two expeditions totaling 2,400 ships, to discover the limits of the sea, circa 1310 a.d.    For Abubakari, his empire ended at the sea that had stopped Alexander the Great but it would not stop this emperor of the largest empire on earth.  He was so passionate in his belief in a world beyond the sea that he lead the second expedition himself.  Van Sertima, reporting from oral histories that have been passed down to this day, writes:  “…One day, dressed in a flowing white robe and a jeweled turban, he took leave of Mali and set out with his fleet down to Senegal, heading west across the Atlantic, never to return.  He took his griot and half his history with him.”   What a tale that griot could tell if we could hear him now.  Because Abubakari never returned to Africa, this gravesite may be evidence that he stretched his empire farther than was known at that time. 
Christopher Columbus heard the stories, now common along the African coast, of a New World across the sea.  Arriving in the Americas in the 1490’s, he was in time to see African settlements, speak of African artifacts in letters and hear stories from native villagers of the Africans who had preceded him.
By the 1700’s, African civilizations had fallen and Europeans began using Africans as work animals to be captured in Africa, packed and shipped for a month’s-long Middle Passage across the Atlantic and sold in the Americas to work the wealth from the land the Europeans were taking from the native people.  During this period, Africans came not as adventuring seamen, but were brought as chattel. 
 ”The period of the 1500’s and 1600’s came after a thousand years of great independent states in West Africa,” says Professor Clarke.   “After the Moslem Africans lost control over Spain, they began to prey on the Africans further to the south.  They destroyed the great independent states in West Africa, and subsequently set Africa up for the Western slave trade.”
As any other nationalities, when Africans were brought to this hemisphere, they came carrying  their many languages and their learning. But unlike any other nationality, everything else was taken from them, and they were delivered physically and psychologically decimated and naked on these shores.
Those that survived the 240 years of the Middle Passage (1619-1859), found themselves now Africans-in-America, held captive by a people who viewed them as property enough to be bought and sold, but human enough to be raped.  Forbidden their own languages, the Africans began to use local words to identify objects and their environment. They standardized on the local language, whether it was French, Portuguese or English. For the Africans, this learning process had to be done in an atmosphere of terror where killings and beatings were only a glance away. As the centuries passed, and as American slavery centered more in the southern United States, many Africans escaped into the North or joined others in the tribes of the indigenous people. Communities were formed from the Seminoles of Florida to the Brooklyn, NY districts of Weeksville and Vinegar Hill.
Escapees to the North found each other through each other and worked together to build their communities. By the 1800’s, the Africans had positioned themselves to build schools and large churches.  In the pamphlet Weeksville Then and Now, authors Joan Maynard and Gwen Cottman show the importance of learning and self-help to the Africans. They have a replica of The Freedmen’s Torchlight, a community newspaper published by the African Civilization Society which was housed in its own building on the corner of Dean Street and Troy Avenue in Brooklyn, NY. Dated December1866, a year after the Civil War ended, “it included stirring statements of its philosophy of Black self-help, information on the Freedman’s Schools, featured moral anecdotes and listings of their contributors. The front page was devoted to the Alphabet, Basic English, Arithmetic, Geography and view of the nature of God and Man. In this way, the newspaper also served as a textbook for the newly freed slaves to learn reading and writing.” “Some organizations prior to and during the development of Weeksville were the New York Society for Mutual Relief, founded in 1808; the African Woolmen Society, founded in 1810; the Brooklyn African Tompkins Society, founded circa 1827 and the Weeksville Assistance Society, circa 1854. A chapter of the Prince Hall Free and Accepted Masons started in Brooklyn with the formation of Widows Sons Lodge No. II in 1849.” And then there were the churches. “Brooklyn’s first Black church, the Bridge Street African Wesleyan Methodist Episcopal Church, was incorporated in 1818. Along with Siloam Presbyterian, (founded ).  This church had the reputation of being a terminal on the Underground Railroad.  “Education for Black children in Brooklyn grew from the independent efforts of Black religious leaders such as Peter Croger, who had a school in his home in 1815. In 1819, William M. Read, a graduate of the New York African Free School, was teaching Black children in segregated settings. However by 1827, even these quarters were denied. By 1840, some Manhattan Black folks who had settled in Carsville, just south of Weeksville, had established another African school.”

While this was going on in Brooklyn, legal slavery was the reality for the vast majority of Africans in the United States.  Because it was against the law to teach Africans to read and write (and the penalty for doing so could be death), this learning had to be done in secret places, by an exhausted people who had been worked hard in the fields from sun-up to sun down. And it was by candlelight that the English language was learned. More generations of social isolation passed, and some of those Africans who remained captured in the South were being called upon to perform more and more complex tasks on the plantations and in the manufacturing areas. They were used as expert farmers, builders and craftspeople. Brooklyn Professor William Mackey notes that the furnishings of Thomas Jefferson’ s mansion were made by slaves.   The house itself was built by them. Many masters were breeding their personal slaves themselves. Fathering mulatto children who were raised with their white children and often educated with them as well.
Frederick Douglas was such a man, and his command of the English language, in speech and by pen, took him to world recognition as the publisher of  The North Star  newspaper, and as a leading abolitionist.
The buying and selling of human beings during the American slave trade was the biggest business the world has ever known.  In a text on the period, H. A. Texler writes in Slavery in Missouri, 1805-1865,  “The slave trade was partly systematic, partly casual. For local sales, every public auctioneer handled slaves along with other property, and in each city there were brokers buying them to sell again, or handling them on commission. One of these at New Orleans in 1854 was Thomas Foster, who advertised that he would pay the highest prices for sound Negroes as well as sell those whom merchants or private citizens might consign him. Expecting to receive Negroes throughout the season, he said he would have a constant stock of mechanics, domestics and field hands; and in addition he would house as many as three hundred slaves at a time, importing them from other states.    Similarly, Clark and Grubb of Whitehall Street in Atlanta, when advertising their business as wholesale grocers, commission merchants and Negro brokers, announced that they kept slaves of all classes constantly on hand and were paying the highest market prices for all that might be offered.  In St. Louis in 1859, Corbin Thompson and Bernard M. Lynch were the principal slave dealers. The rates of the latter, according to his placard, were 37 1/2 cents per day for board and 2 1/2 percent, commission on sales; and all slaves entrusted to his care were to be held at their owners’ risk.”
More money was invested in slaves than all stock-in-trade, including bank stock, incorporated funds and more.  This is indicative of the value placed on an unpaid labor pool, and with good reason.  The land was virgin territory which had to be converted into cash.  It was the slaves who made it income-producing. 
According to the U.S. Bureau of the Census, the first estimate of national wealth of the United States is found in Economics: A Statistical Manual for the United States of America, 1806 edition by Samuel Blodget, Jr. (See Table 1). Of the $2,505 million  dollars (2.5 billion) of national wealth, $1,661 million was in land stolen from the indigenous people and $200 million was the value assigned to the slaves.
Ulrich Phillips, writing in American Negro Slavery, notes, “The accompanying chart will  show the fluctuations of the average prices of prime field hands (unskilled young men) in Virginia, at Charleston, in middle Georgia and at New Orleans, as well as the contemporary range of average prices for cotton of middling grade in the chief American market, that of New York.  The range for prime slaves, it will be seen, raised from about $300 and $400 a head in the upper and lower South, respectively in 1795 to a range of from $400 to $600 in 1803…”   By using these figures we find that the minimum amount of money invested in slaves was $521,366,000 in 1805.   Therefore, the total national wealth could be more accurately calculated as  2.8 billion dollars ($2,826,366,000), adding an additional 300 million to Blodget’s figure.   This means that 77% of the total national wealth of the United States in 1805 ($2,182,366,000) was based on holding African-Americans as property to work the stolen land.
By 1856, there were 3,580,023 slaves according to an average of the 1850 and 1860 Census counts.   Bear in mind here that in 1813, Congress laid a direct tax on property, including “houses, lands and slaves.”  This meant that there was now an economic motivation to under count this part of the owners’ property – the fewer slaves reported, the less taxes paid;  slaves were easier to hide than houses or land.  This is coupled with the natural inclination of the census to under count the Black population.   The evidence is clear in the General Population Statistics, 1790-1990.  By 1860, the “percentage increase in Black population over preceding census” averaged 28.8% since 1790.  In the 1870 census, the percentage growth was only 9.9%.   So what happened to the other 18.9% of the expected population?  They disappeared in 1865 with the Emancipation Proclamation.  No longer having a value attached to them, these 859,000 African-Americans were lost.  It’s been 120 years, and judging from the low-count controversy of the 1990 Census, the Bureau hasn’t found them yet, although they are reported to be looking for next year’s 2000 Census.  We can safely regard these counts as the way-down-low end of an actual population estimate.
By 1856, the advertised prices for African-Americans on one document of that time ranged from a high of $2,700 for Anderson, a “No.1 bricklayer and mason,” and $1,900 for George, a “No. 1 blacksmith,” to $750 for Reuben, even though he was labeled “unsound.”  (See Railroad Contractor’s Credit Sale document of a choice gang of 41 slaves.)   The average cost for this lot of people was  $1,488.   As a second reference for this number, we can look at the chart for the cost of Prime Field Hands, and find that it is pretty accurate.   By multiplying the census count of slaves by the average advertised price, we arrive at a value of $5.3 billion ($5,327,079,968).    This may not look like a lot of money now, but compare it to other figures of the day.  The National Wealth Estimate for the entire nation in 1856 was $12.3 billion ($12,396,000,000).  [Note:  All figures come from Tables in the cited U.S. Bureau of the Census publication.]  Total Bank Savings Deposits in 1856 was $95.6 million.  Manhattan Island, Land and Buildings were worth only $900 million dollars, less than one-fifth of the value invested in African-Americans.  The 1855 total capital and property investment in railroads was only $763.6 million dollars.   Why the $5 billion dollar investment in slaves?   In 1859, the total private production income was $4 billion dollars.  Of this total, labor-intensive industries like “agriculture” and “transportation and communication” accounted for $1.9 billion dollars, almost one-half of all total private income.  This explains why “a good field hand and laborer” would run you $1,550 for Big Fred aged 24 and $1,900 for George, a “No. 1 blacksmith”.  Men like these gave such a good return on the dollar that their owners would, and did, kill freely to keep the system in place. 
Africans in the Americas  Part 2
Part 1 of this series covered the earliest Africans to the Americas, both those caught in ocean currents flowing naturally to the Western Hemisphere, as well as the later African explorers who deliberately sought the new land.  The later importation of African as slaves to build the founding infrastructure of the United States and ended noting that slavery was the largest industry in the United States, with over 5 billion dollars invested.
The money earned from this investment found its way into a variety of banking institutions, which increased from 506 in 1834 to 1,643 in 1865.  Many of the names remain familiar to this day:  The Bank of New York Company, Inc. – founded in 1784,  Fleet National Bank – 1791, Chase Manhattan Corporation – 1799, Citicorp/Citibank N.A. -1812 , The Dime Savings Bank – 1859.    As banks in King Cottons’ “chief American market, that of New York,” it is inconceivable that these institutions, and through them the nation, did not benefit from the profits made on a slave’s wages.   Their business then, as it is now, was to be a source of funds to build empires in a variety of industries across the continent to make land purchases, upgrade equipment, save to send children to college, etc.   Railroads could be built using a combination of slave labor and loans taken at banks that held money on deposit from the cotton/slave industry.   Money was also paid to a variety of people who, while not slave owners themselves, were “in the loop” of payments for goods and services.  Thus were assets being used to develop the country for the benefit of  Europeans and their heirs.
Slavery is often looked at as a blot upon humanity rather than the business decision it is.  Africans have been presented as lazy, shiftless, good-for-nothing, when the exact opposite was true.  We were a vital necessity to this nation.  Africans were the most valuable resource, our value on the open market dwarfed all other industries and values except for the land itself.   Historians talk about the Industrial Revolution starting in 18th century England, and the computer/information age of today.  Left out is the Slave Age, that period of the dark days of the golden age of white supremacy. This was the time when the United States, an emerging nation at the time, dealt most efficiently with a formidable problem: the supply and cost of manual labor.
At $865 billion a year, information technology represents about 12% of the 1997 Gross Domestic Product of $7,214 billion.  In 1805, slave labor represented as much as 20% of the national wealth.  By the 1850’s- ’60’s, that figure rose to as high as 40%.  If a 12% industry like information technology can affect the entire nation, how much impact does a 20-40% industry have?  Let’s take a look at the 1850’s and the effects of slave labor on the economy.
In his work, History of American Business & Industry, Alex Groner observes, “In the sense that they were large and complex-producing units, the big plantations were the South’s factories.  The hundreds of slaves included large numbers of production workers -the field hands- as well as such specialists and skilled artisans as carpenters, drovers, watchmen, coopers, tailors, millers, butchers, shipwrights, engineers, dentists and nurses.
Because virtually entire families could be put to work in the fields for most of the year, the slave economy proved ideal for cotton culture.  It was not only the plantations of the South but also the factories, shipping merchants and banks of the North whose economies became tied more and more closely to cotton.   What North and South had in common was the prosperity resulting from the growth of cotton production.  The size of the crop climbed steadily from 80 million pounds in 1815 to 460 million, or more than half the world’s output by 1834, and to more than a billion pounds by 1850…..From 1830 until the Civil War, cotton provided approximately half of the nation’s total exports. At an average of 400 man hours per 400 pound ginned bale of cotton (based on census averages), these billion pounds required a billion hours of unpaid man-hours.   These were supplied by African-American men, women and children working as slave labor under threat of torture and death. 
Thus produced, the cotton crop traded hands on exchanges like the largest one in New York.  Banks and other businesses participated in cotton transactions that were all handled as they usually are, for a fee.   And so the brokers, traders, lenders, etc., all profited first.  Then came the employees of the firms, the landlords, the washerwomen, the street vendors, messengers, haberdashers, milliners and all of their families, plus mortgage holders and service-providers in an ever-widening circle.

SLAVE CROPS TOTAL MORE THAN 60% OF  NATION’S EXPORTS
Now traded, cotton found its way to 25 of the 35 states and territories for manufacturing.  We don’t have to assume how the product was distributed, we can look at the 1850 list of cotton manufacturers.  (See U.S. Census Table CXCVL)   Here, we see there were 1,064 businesses directly employing over 92,000 people across the country.  Leading the way is Massachusetts, using 223,607 bales of cotton while employing over 29,000 people.  It is also interesting to note that the export of slave crops cotton, tobacco and rice totaled over 60% of all the nation’s exports.   This meant that the shipping industry, the dockworkers and the factories on both sides of the Atlantic all made a living from the peculiar institution of African-Americans working as slaves.   It was possible for people throughout Europe to work in cotton factories or peripheral industries in their home countries, save their money and book passage to America.  Here, the newly arrived immigrant could get off the boat, and work selling apples on Wall Street to the employees of the Cotton Exchange.  A seamstress from English mills could come and find work making dresses for the wives and mending the coats of the men who worked in the financial district.   Maybe you’ve heard stories like these before.   When an industry produces over 60% of the national exports, it reaches farther than can be seen from the docks or from the fields.  And there were other crops as well.  There were 2,681 sugar plantations and 8,327 hemp planters.   In 1850, there were over 20 million bushels of sweet potatoes, 3 million bushels of Irish potatoes, 7 million bushels of peas and beans, and 8 million pounds of wool, all produced in slave-holding states.  The African-Americans that Europeans called mere-do-well, helped clothe and feed this nation when it needed it most.   

GOVERNMENT PROFITS MOST
The government profited most of all.  The export of slave-produced crops allowed this emerging nation to import from the more industrialized countries (with tariffs applied) without incurring a trade deficit.    Also, slave-intensive industries such as agriculture, manufacturing and transportation comprised over 60% of the total private production income at the time.  In one way or another, this money was taxed.  The slaves themselves were taxable as property beginning in 1815.   The Federal Government profited by first placing a tax on the slave as a unit of property, and again when taxes were paid on the land the slaves improved.    Taxing authorities, whether federal or local, made their money at some point in the trading of cotton and again when salaries found their way into taxable areas.   The government uses a myriad of ways to raise the money it needs to do what it has to do – to build the infrastructure of the nation.   To build the roads, forts and pay the federal marshals.  This was done, in large parts, with slave dollars flowing like an irrigating stream, watering  national, state and local governments at various stops along the way.   And now today, the United States stands as a money pump with $7 trillion worth of pressure, creating jobs for Joe Blow in Idaho, and millionaires and billionaires with fortunes that span the globe.  But it is a pump that was primed with the blood of African and indigenous people. [1. The American Heritage History of American Business & Industry by Alex Groner and the Editors of American Heritage and Business Week. 1972]
Throughout all of the slave history of the United States, there were hundreds of known uprisings and rebellions.  A few of the best-known were the Gabriel Prosser and Jack Bowler Revolt of 1800 in Richmond, Virginia, the revolt led by Denmark Vesey in South Carolina in 1822 and the rebellion led by Nat Turner in 1831.  Africans continued to escape individually and in groups throughout the slave era.   Many went to Native American villages, others to Mexico, but most traveled the “Underground Railroad” to the Northern Free states, hiding in “stations” in cellars and barns of good people along the way.   Heroes abound during this period, but one who stands out is Harriet Tubman.   Ms. Tubman made nineteen trips leading over 300 people to freedom.   For stealing the property of the slave owners, a reward of $40,000 was placed on her capture, and that was when $40,000 was real money.  
There were many abolitionists working against slavery, but certainly the most courageous was John Brown.   So passionate was he that he led a force of nineteen men, including his five sons, and captured the government arsenal at  Harper’s Ferry in 1859.  His goal was to arm the slaves and begin a slave revolt that would spread through the South.   He was hanged for his efforts.   When it comes to passion about ending slavery, Abraham Lincoln was no John Brown.  At the height of the Civil War, and against his better judgment, President Lincoln was inexorably led to signing the Emancipation Proclamation.  As W. E. B. DuBois writes in Black Reconstruction, “It made no difference how much Abraham Lincoln might protest that this was not a war against slavery or ask General McDowell ‘if it would not be well to allow the armies to bring back those fugitive slaves which have crossed the Potomac with our troops (a communication which was marked ’secret’).’  It was in vain that Lincoln rushed entreaties and then commands to Fremont in Missouri, not to emancipate the slaves of rebels, and then had to hasten similar orders to Hunter in South Carolina.  The slave, despite every effort, was becoming the center of war….In August, Lincoln faced the truth, front forward; and that truth was not simply that Negroes ought to be free, it was that thousands of them were already free, and that either the power which slaves put into the hands of the South was to be taken from it, or the North could not win the war.  Either the Negro was to be allowed to fight or the draft itself would not bring enough white men into the Army to keep up the war.”  With thousands of Africans joining the battles, the Civil War was won by the Northern states.   As Abolitionist Wendell Phillips put it at a meeting in Faneuil Hall in Boston, “Gentlemen, you know very well that this nation called 4,000,000 of Negroes into citizenship to save itself.  (Applause).  It never called them for their own sakes.  It called them to save itself.”  (Cries of “Hear, Hear.”)
So now, grudgingly let free, the Africans entered a twenty-year period called Reconstruction.  This was a time when Africans, after having been freed, “turned out like cattle” is the phrase Professor Mackey uses, the Africans again displayed the same self-help ethic that had empowered those Northern Africans who had formed associations, built businesses and churches.   Africans began to form towns, till land and raise families for the first time.  They did this while contending with things like the Black Codes which were as DuBois says, “representing the logical result of attitudes of mind existing when Lincoln still lived…In all cases, there was a plain and indisputable attempt on the part of the Southern states to make Negroes slaves in everything but name.”    In addition to the laws, Africans had to contend with bands of murdering white terrorists who killed Black people at will.   Gradually, over the decades, as the killings subsided and Africans continued to come together, there was born a civil rights movement and the right to vote. Professor John Henrik Clarke says, “One of the distinguishing features of the civil rights movement was continuation of the sense of racial unity and impatience in African-Americans.”    The anger began to erupt in the street rebellions of the 60’s.  These were first met with troops and tanks and then with a Counterintelligence Program.  Known as COINTELPRO, this operation combined city, state and federal law enforcement agencies in a joint effort to destroy the increasingly militant activism of the African-American community. Groups like the Black Panther Party were infiltrated and destroyed.  Misinformation was sown and African-American dissenters treated by law enforcement agencies in the same way as dissenters are in any country with very strict rules for minority peoples and dissenting opinions.  They were murdered in their beds as in the case of Fred Hampton in Chicago, shot down in the street, cornered in houses and jailed on false charges.   This history continues to live in prisons where many of those politically active Africans are still held today. 
One of the things that may have been learned by COINTELPRO operatives was that African-Americans are an unusually resilient and community-centered people.  That they have a legacy of spirituality and self-help.   It was during this time that drug use began to grow in the African-American community.  If you want to know where in the world the drugs at the corner were coming from, look to where in the world the CIA was active. In the Sixties, the heroin epidemic came in from CIA cohorts in Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. This is extensively documented in Al McCoy’s book, The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia.
Going into minute detail, McCoy shows how the CIA’s connection with its covert allies led directly to the heroin epidemic of the 1960’s. The crack explosion coincided with the CIA’s work on behalf of the Reagan Administration in support of the Nicaraguan Contras in the mid-eighties. In Dark Alliance, investigative reporter Gary Webb reveals the connections between the Contras, the CIA and the crack epidemic of the 1980’s.   In one instance, one man, Danilo Blandon, a CIA “asset”, was reported to have brought in (“easily”) 55 tons of cocaine between 1980 and 1991.   This is only one man making deliveries destined for African-American communities.  This is not seepage through the borders.   These are packing crates and duffel bags targeted at selected communities.   There is the old saw in the major media that whatever CIA involvement there was, was by “rogue officers.” But that’s not the case at all.   Recently, convicted traitors Aldrich Aimes and Harold Nicholson were rogue officers. We know this because they were put under surveillance, captured and imprisoned. The “rogue” officers and “assets” who conducted, condoned, protected or supplied the drug-running into the African-American communities of the United States were either paid government salaries for their work, or were allowed to profit from their drug-dealing in return for doing national security favors for the CIA.   It is not difficult to believe that one of those favors was to keep the African-American communities disrupted and demoralized.
Next Week:
Dr. Amos Wilson on Conscousness
Dr Joy DeGruy Leary on Post Traumatic Slavery Disorder.

NOTES FROM DAKAR- Scholars Send a Message to the World From Brooklyn

It was Super Bowl Sunday, but that was of no matter to the illustrious group assembled to celebrate the life of the great Senegalese historian, Cheikh Anta Diop on the 24th Anniversary of his death. Revered historian of the Nile Valley civilizations, Dr. Yosef Ben-Jochannan was there with his wife, Sister Khepra, co-founder of the First World Alliance, a “communiversity” as Dr. Leonard Jeffries, also present, had christened it. African-centered musician Randy Weston and his wife and others had the privilege of hearing Yaa-Lengi Meema Ngemi, the translator of Diop’s masterwork, Civilization or Barbarism: An Authentic Anthropology, speak on the importance of Cheikh Anta Diop today.

“His life’s work was to free his people. To give back to Africa the legacy that is Africa.” Ngemi said that Civilization or Barbarism was the book where Diop put together his lifetime’s research. “Diop believed there had to be a change in the African mentality on the continent. In the introduction he says that ‘Imperialism, like a prehistoric monster, first kills the being culturally, spiritually and intellectually before killing us physically. In the denial of the intellectual accomplishments of our ancestors was the cultural and mental death that preceded and paved the way for our physical death both on the continent and throughout the Diaspora.” Ngemi says that Diop made it his purpose to rediscover that knowledge of the ancestors. “Because without it we cannot redefine ourselves worldwide.”
After Ngemi finished the translation, he started to teach about Diop and found that most of the people, people of the Diaspora, did not know Diop’s name. “Cheikh Anta Diop is on a different level spiritually, culturally, and he was a man ahead of his time.” Ngemi refers to Diop’s 1960 work, Black Africa the Economic and Cultural basis for an African State, where Diop contended that Africa had the resources the world wanted and Africa could not only develop itself and compete with the rest of the world, “There is room for all of the Diaspora to return.”
“In this little booklet Diop prophesized as to what was the main problem about us as a people,” said Ngemi. “Diop writes, speaking of his own generation, ‘Historical circumstances now commands of our generation, that it solve, in an expeditious manner, the vital problems that face Africa, most especially, the cultural problem. If we do not succeed in this, we will appear in the history of the development of our people as the watershed generation that was unable to ensure the unified cultural survival of the African continent. We will be the generation which out of political and intellectual blindness, committed the error fatal to our national future.’ That’s what Diop wrote in 1960.”
And here we are, some 50 years later and Ngemi says that cultural identity, which Diop identified as what unites an entire people, “is still what is besetting us. On the continent and in the Diaspora.” Speaking of his own country Congo, Zaire, he said that 10 million have been killed since 1996. “10 million. They continue to die as I speak here. Little girls as young as 9 years old being gang-raped by other Black people, Africans, in Africa, on the African continent. 10 million. Why? Lack of cultural identity.”
Ngemi says that reading Diop’s work has an altering effect, and that there is “a birth of a new person after reading Diop’s work,” and learning “what the world owes to your ancestral genius.”
Easter is still two months away, but a Resurrection is what Ngemi says is the responsibility of conscious African people. “We have to resurrect our people. We have to deliver. Because if we’ve been killed, culturally, intellectually, spiritually, we have to be reborn in order to free ourselves.”
And he says until the masses of people can be resurrected and achieve rebirth, then African people on the continent and throughout the Diaspora “will continue to navigate this blankness of mental slavery. Slavery of the spirit, slavery of culture.”
When Ngemi spoke about the problems with the education system in African nations, he could have been speaking of Bedford-Stuyvesant schools as well. “Africans experience problems today because Diop is not being taught in schools in Senegal,” or in the Congo he says. “Go and see the curriculum in Senegal, or all over Africa. It is still a colonial curricula.” A curriculum that does not teach of the time before this time, before the colonial control and influence over the education. It is the contention of Mr. Ngemi, Diop and the others, that it is that knowledge, that will set the African free, at home and throughout the Diaspora, even here in Brooklyn.

View From Here: Gentrification

“The Gentrification of Brooklyn: The Pink Elephant Speaks” is the new exhibit at The Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts (MoCADA), and the title makes you wonder what will the elephant say? Because it isn’t just what’s called gentrification that is troubling, after all, communities transition from one ethnic group to another for various reasons.

Whether it’s Irish to Italian or Jewish, the group that was being displaced, left because they didn’t want to be around the newcomers, and went on to form new communities at higher economic levels. What is troubling about the gentrification that is taking place now in the African-American community in Brooklyn, is it’s fitting the pattern of the gentrification of Native American neighborhoods some time ago.

“People are not just moving out, going down South or taking off for the suburbs. They are being stopped and frisked by the police at every opportunity, shipped off to prison warehouse facilities for years of ill-training, killed by whoever has a gun and a reason, killed by AIDS and the malevolent “good health living with AIDS” marketing of the pharmaceutical companies, killed by obesity, diabetes and high blood pressure, killed by poor judgment born of poor judgment, killed by unemployment double the Great Depression levels, killed by hundreds of years of miseducation and economic disenfranchisement, both enabled by the original crime, the theft of language and nationhood during slavery. Killed by the constant stress on the masses of Black people just to go about day-to-day survival.
African-American residents of Bedford-Stuyvesant, confronted by the multiplying and organized Hasidim to the north in Williamsburg and priced out east of Classon Avenue, are faced with seeing their community going the way of Harlem with white folks able to pick off the opportunities as they come up. If ever there was a time to come together and follow the example of Marcus Garvey, Elijah Muhammad and our Hasidic brothers, organizing people around common economic goals, it is now.
You can call it gentrification if you’d like, but a slow genocide is what it is, a claiming of territory by victorious people. It’s nothing personal, everyone is quite civil about it, tsk, tsking about the unfortunate, but unchangeable, state of affairs. Just go quietly and don’t make a scene. For further clarification, ask a Native American, if you can find one.

BSVAC Welcomes Back First-Responders, Readies Second Wave

 ”When we got to the hospital the first thing was to see patients.  Some of them were crying and screaming.  We were working since then, nonstop,” said Poucheralph Salomon, a member of the 44-person medical delegation of the Bedford-Stuyvesant Volunteer Ambulance Corps that was on the ground Saturday after the Tuesday earthquake.   “I’m a Haitian immigrant who came here in 1998, and I’m an American and I was proud to get down there and be able to help my people.” When they slept it was on the floor of a nearby house and then they were back surrounded by the sounds of pain and the smell of blood and death, giving their food to the patients. “I feel like I’m still in Haiti right now.” 

Mr. Salomon was speaking in an interview after a press conference welcoming the returning volunteers, and introducing the second wave of volunteers going to Haiti.  At the conference Congressman Ed Towns said, “I was watching television and when the Bedford-Stuyvesant Volunteer Ambulance Corps marched off the plane I had such a fantastic feeling that Bedford-Stuyvesant was there.”  The congressman said he thought back to when he first met with Commander Rocky Robinson when Robinson was working out of the second floor of an abandoned building that was next to the current location.  “I remember when I went up to that second floor and it was raining inside the building.  When I left I said I’m going to help him but that man must have lost his mind to go into a building like that and talk about starting an ambulance corps.”

Acknowledging the power of a dream, Towns said, “As a result of your involvement here in Bedford-Stuyvesant,  Bedford-Stuyvesant went to Haiti and saved lives.  Within 24 hours, they delivered 23 babies. They were able to relieve pain and suffering.   This is what it is all  about – people who help people.” 

After the press conference Robinson spoke to the congressman of the kind of work they are doing in Haiti, saying of a CNN report, “They showed our dog, we have a dog, Cassius, named after Cassius Clay before he became Muhammad Ali, and he discovered the man in the hole.  And that’s our people pulling him out.  So we’re not only in the hospital, we have a small rescue team that’s saving lives.”

Dr. Roger St. Louis, one of the second wave of volunteers headed to Haiti as a member of the Ambulance Corps, said that the medical care must continue or more will die.  “Here’s the reason why.  We need orthopedics, anesthesiologists and surgeons on the first blow, and now it’s infections that are going to spread and kill people.”   Dr. St. Louis  emphasized the need for ongoing care, and the risk of gangrene setting into untreated wounds.  

“They need antibiotics, they need an arrangement where they can heal.  We believe that our first need will be healing the wounds and healing the infections.”
Another volunteer is Khadijah Shakur, a registered nurse since 1986.  A specialist in obstetrics and orthopedics, Shakur couldn’t sleep well in the aftermath of the quake. “So when I heard that the Ambulance Corps was looking for volunteers, I immediately came.  I felt I have to help my people.”  Even though she will be leaving soon, Khadijah says she is “restless and anxious because there are things that are needed down there.  Infection is running rampant and we need to be there and lay hands on these people.  They need doctors, nurses and physical therapists.  We have to get on the ground to help our people out.” 

Volunteer Dr. Gaston Valcin emphasized the emotional and psychological support  that is also needed.  “The Haitian people need counseling because so many are in shock right now.”  Asked how they could give up practices and go,  Dr. Hans Garry Torlan  said, “We’re natives of Haiti.  Haiti is our heart.  We put everything aside.”
Also, said Dr. St. Louis,  President Martin of Kings County Hospital is giving “lots of leeway” and providing opportunities, including a department where staff can register to go help in Haiti.    “Kings County is helping 110% in this catastrophic problem.”

Looking over where the BSVAC has come in the last twenty-two years, Robinson said, “Before, we were only the EMTs and paramedics, and now doctors and nurses are coming on board because they believe in what we’re doing.   I get calls from as far away as Georgia and Florida.  We’re galvanizing the Haitian community, the Caribbean community, the African-American community and even the Jewish community is having a dance for us on Monday.  People are really getting on board, but we are the leaders.  We have to lead the way.”  David Mark Greaves

View From Here – Help For Haiti

In this most calamitous of human tragedies in Haiti, the further devastation of people who already start from scratch, we’ve seen a global response of nations and individuals.   If you’re in the search and rescue profession anyplace on the planet, or a medical professional able to travel and driven by a need to heal, Haiti is the Big One, the place to be.  So they stopped what they were doing, gathered supplies and rushed on planes headed into harms way.   Natured may have shown the worst that it is capable of, but mankind countered with the best that we had, from all nations and that should also be remembered along with the pain.

There are many mainstream ways to send aid but we’ve offered several local efforts here, because when you’re speaking about Haiti, you’re speaking about slavery, skin color and political exploitation and because of that, it’s important that African people empower Black grassroots groups to give the aid that is needed. 

That point was driven home for me after I had just left a press conference centering around churches and groups coming together to help Haiti, and I turned on CNN and was assaulted by repeated images of armed forces “preventing looters,” a narrative of white supremacy they couldn’t shake, even after their use of the exact same language was pointed out after Katrina.

Each of these natural disasters was made worse because of the history dark-skinned people have had in the Americas.   Black poverty, whether highlighted by a hurricane in New Orleans an earthquake in Haiti, or depression-era unemployment Brooklyn, is slavery-based, subject to dark skin oppression and continues to this day.  So give to help in Haiti, and by empowering locally, help the community you’re in.

Churches Rally to Support Haiti Relief

“For the past 15 years, the Haiti Support Project has been working to build a constituency to increase the understanding of Haiti.  Founder Ron Daniels was speaking at a press conference of the Churches United to Support Haiti strategy meeting called by Reverend Dennis Dillon and held at the Brooklyn Christian Center on Atlantic Avenue, Brooklyn. 
With help from nations and organizations from around the world pouring into Haiti, Daniels sees the focus of his organization as being on 3 phases: “relief, recovery and reconstruction.” Daniels said it was important that the Haiti Support Project find the groups that lie outside of the usual flow of aid dollars and services.  The “niche” that they decided to work with are the local grassroots organizations with a history of delivering social services, literacy and health services. 
Daniels insists that capacity building is the path for the future that Haiti must also embark on.  “Haiti was the first Black republic in the world”, he says, “Haiti defeated Napoleon” and thus weakened him, paved the way for the Louisiana Purchase.
“What is needed is a global Marshall Plan for sustainable development that includes components such as microcredit pending so that people can become “fishermen and women and not just consumers of fish,” said Daniels adding that the Haiti Relief Fund is supported by the National Action Network and the National Urban League. 
Mindful that organizations from the Red Cross to Wyclef Jean’s Y‚le Haiti  have difficulties maintaining current filings,  Daniels said that 100% of the donations will go to services, and that administrative costs will be covered by other funding.  An oversight  committee headed by Dean Richard Jones of Medgar Evers College, will ensure that the financial records will have “transparency and accountability.”  The Web site is www.ibw21.org.
The organization’s work will include counseling for Haitians in the U. S., a Black adoption program and a Toussaint L’Overture Brigade of students who will go to Haiti over Spring Break to help with the recovery effort. 
“We recognize there has to be a journey beyond this crisis,”  said Dillon, echoing Councilwoman James’ call for a sustained giving effort.    Dillon announced that the venerable Mother Zion AME Church would be the venue for the February 6th Unity Prayer Service and Haiti Relief Rally.   The 2,600-seat church is located on 137th Street between Malcolm X and Adam Clayton Powell Blvds. in Harlem.
American Clergy Leadership Conference co-Chair Michael Jenkins said they are calling  Christian, Muslim and Jewish houses of worship together at this time when “All of the world is weeping for Haiti.
Councilwoman Letitia James called the events “a tragedy of biblical proportions” and noted that the “men and women of God have responded in kind.”  Councilman Jumaane Williams said that people are dying because the infrastructure is not there.  “Don’t send supplies, send money, said the councilman.  It’s time to be surgical in our support.”

Bed-Stuy’s Own Volunteer Ambulance Corps on the Ground in Haiti

“First on the Scene” is the motto of the Bedford-Stuyvesant Volunteer Ambulance Corps, and they earned it when founders Rocky Robinson and Joe Perez were working without an ambulance running with oxygen tanks strapped to their backs in the organization’s fledgling days in 1988.   And now in response to the Haiti earthquake, “Nobody expected us to even come close to what we have been able to do”, said an energized Rocky Robinson. “I woke up and I said I’ve trained thousands of paramedics and EMT’s and I sent out the word that we needed everybody who ever came through the BSVAC to come back now.”
It was through this network that a former member who knew Wyclef Jean told him what the BSVAC was doing, and through that connection and the Church of Scientology chartered a plane and 44 rapid-response volunteer medics, nurses and doctors left Kennedy Airport Saturday afternoon, landed at Port-au-Prince and went directly to the hospital where they cleaned the area and set up an emergency room.  “They’ve set 300 fractures, delivered three babies and started IVs.” 
Robinson says that hundreds of people are coming to join the Bed-Stuy Volunteer Ambulance Corps to help in this effort.
“We’re like Haiti”, Rocky said, “we’re the poorest volunteer ambulance corps but we know how to work with nothing.”  And when it comes to providing relief in Haiti, “We do more with a penny than others do with a dollar.”
“People are lying on the bricks right now,” says Robinson and BSVAC is putting “the help where the hurt is.  The Red Cross does good work, but we’re the Black Cross and every second counts.”   
Lifesaving flights like these can take off on faith but they need money for medical supplies, food and water.   Donations can be made at www.bsvac.org . 
David Mark Greaves

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